While we find the West Texas town of Alpine a fine place – we’ve had some wonderful sautéed green beans at a little Chinese eatery on the main drag, and Ring-Tail Records carries older, rarely seen vinyl – there must be something that the local government doesn’t like about transparency.

In this case, the the local government is the board of the Southwest Texas Municipal Gas Corp. When the board gathered last Monday, among the agenda items was approval of an open records request from the city. Which begs the question: Who ever thought a board needed to approve a public information request?

“The gas board erroneously told its employees that it had to get providing records approved,” Alpine City Attorney Rod Ponton said. Ponton and Alpine City Councilman Julian Gonzales had requested information from the gas company, “but they were not forthcoming in giving it to us so we had to file a request.”

Ponton said the gas company operates under an agreement with several area towns and is a taxpayer-funded operation subject to the state’s Public Information Act.

“I think it’s just a small board out in the sticks and wanted to be protective,” Ponton said, adding that the information was delivered. A public records request is in itself a public record, and there is no law prohibiting a governing board from reviewing a request, although it is as rare as it is unnecessary and unofficial.

Apparently the gas company has other problems. We tried to dial up the gas company’s website, but it has apparently exceeded its bandwidth. 

The administrator for the site, Robert Stolz, had a tale of woe: "Due to what’s going on with budgetary problems over there, they aren’t paying me to keep that site going. They haven’t paid me in nearly a year, so even if you could access the site, there are no updates.”

Some folks in the community don’t have a lot of love for the gas company, either.